Last month, on a visit to God’s Own Country and Land of Rubber – Kerala, I had the privilege of getting acquainted with a different class of rubber machinery namely the TSR Processing Machinery.

Most of you would know that TSR stands for Technically Specified Rubber. And for few hardcore rubber machinery enthusiasts, like me, TSR also means Twin Screw Roller.

So during my various interactions with rubber entrepreneurs, the words RSS, TSR and Creper were being spelt-out at frequent intervals.

Fortunately for me, RSS and TSR were familiar terms!

If you are into rubber sourcing, you already know that introduction of Technically Specified Rubber (TSR) has standardized the rubber grading and simplified procurement for buyers. This means, you now have the choice of not relying only on visual assessments (read RSS) that are subjective.

Instead, you assess the actual content of foreign and volatile matter in TSR to pick up the right choice of rubber grade according to your product processing requirement.

Depending on the origin, standards may marginally vary. You have Standard Malaysian Rubber (SMR), Standard Thai Rubber (STR), Standard Indonesian Rubber (SIR), Standard Sri Lanka Rubber (SSR), Standard Vietnam Rubber (SVR), Indian Standard Natural Rubber (ISNR), etc which I consciously leave for the rubber experts to comment.

During first few exchanges, I gathered that Creper referred to specific rubber machinery for TSR, while subsequent meetings helped me put together a first-hand perspective.

So, What the Heck is Rubber Creper Machine?

To understand better, let’s start with a holistic view.

Any TSR production line (starting with cup/crumb rubber to bales from stacked rubber sheets) involves a series of main machinery and allied machinery lines as you will observe from the flow chart below.

And Rubber Creper Machine is the main TSR processing equipment used for cleaning, thinning and flattening. They are also known as ‘Crepe Rubber Machine’, ‘Macerator’ or just ‘Creper’.

It can flatten your rubber to creping piece which have a certain water and thickness prior to granulating.

Tom C. Abraham, director of Hevea Engineering Works Private Limited informs me, “This machinery can be used as a pre-cleaning or size reduction machine as well as for the blending of crepes prior to final size reduction.”

Tom definitely knows better since Hevea Engineering Works (HEW) is one of the leading TSR Processing Machinery Manufacturers having executed many turnkey projects in the last 20 years.

TSR Processing Units can be seen in Brazil, Cambodia, Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand.

The sizes of the units do vary.

Construction of a Rubber Creper Machine

Structurally, a Rubber Creper consists of front roll and rear roll that are mounted on Cast Iron (CI) frames, adjusting mechanism, transmission mechanism, gear reducer, motor and heavy-duty Mild Steel base plate.

One Creper unit may consist of 1-5 sets of individual Crepers.

Mostly, the rolls are made of Cast Iron (CI) and the connecting gears are made of EN-8 material.

Operation of a Rubber Creper Machine

The Rolls of this Creper have special grooving that is designed for excellent shearing effect on rubber. The shearing effect reduces crepe thickness of rubber blocks and rubber granule.

Reduction in the size of the thick blankets of crumb rubber crepes happen at the intermediate second stages and final stage of the cleaning process. After several passes through the Creper, the crumb rubber can be easily dried without the occurrence (or appearance) of white spots after the trolley dryer in your TSR production process.

The connecting gear mounted, with friction ratio imparts relative movement for the rolls, which makes the material flatten out. The shearing effect of the Creper together with the spraying of water on the rolls further assists in efficient dirt removing of foreign contaminants trapped in the rubber coagulum.

Simultaneously, this speed difference between front roll and rear roll induces knead action and shred rubber material into granulating shape, bar shape and honeycomb shape.

Various equipment suppliers offer you roll diameter sizes ranging from 8-inches to 24-inches with electric motor drives of 10 HP to 125 HP. Roll speeds, drive arrangement, friction ratio and grooving patterns can be customized and selected to suit your requirement.

The throughput of a Rubber Creper varies from 1 to 10 Ton DRC /hour depending on roll speeds. (DRC means Dry Rubber Content). Reputed manufacturers offer robust and accurately built Creper machine to meet your requirements.

Here’s a wonderful short animation video from Golsta that shows the Rubber Creper Machine, quite informatively.

While investing, you may have to decide the production capacity of Rubber Creper Machine according to your production line and layout requirements.

Adds, Tom C. Abraham of Hevea Engineering Works (HEW), “For a unit planning 40T/Day, your TSR processing line may need appropriate sizes of Slab Cutter (1 No.), Pre-breakers (2 Nos.), Hammer Mill (1 No.), Rubber Crepers (6-7 Nos.), Shredder (1 No.), Dryer (1 No.), Baling Press (2 Nos.) together with its ancillaries depending on your processing and/or layout. HEW’s advantage is we can consult turnkey and offer all of these machinery under one roof”.

Summarizing, a Rubber Creper Machine is the main machinery used for cleaning, thinning and flattening in your TSR processing. Different customized features are available helping you pick the right equipment meeting your requirement.

Let me know your thoughts on rubber creper.

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